Megapixels - Do we need more? Are we already there?

[TamiyaGuy]

lol..... I'm sure if I just had more megapixels my pictures would be so much better...

anyone selling any spare megapixels or know of any megapixel dealers???

I need another 3 meg of exposure megapixels and 4 meg of compositional megapixels...

*arrives in a long, black leather jacket* Yo, dawg, I got what you need. Just come 'round back, and you'll have all da pixels in tha' world...

And Mav, yet again, I totally agree with you. From where I see it, pixels are almost now used as a mere marketing tool. You can get 12mp compact cameras nowadays that are advertised as being the best of the best, and I guarantee that a D40 or Rebel would be able to kick the crap out of it in terms of image quality. Extra pixels are only useful if the technology to harness those pixels increases as well. And there are plenty of things to worry about that in some ways are more important than more and more pixels. Image processors, for example. If you didn't have one of those, you could have a 20 Gigapixel camera and you wouldn't be able to take a photo! Or better high-ISO performance, or better lenses, or tougher cameras, the list goes on and on...

And what's the use of a 26mp camera if the person behind it can't tell his playback button from his shutter release! (I actually know a person like that, they kept pressing the Playback button and wondered why it didn't take a photo...)

 

[djacobox372]

As far as 35mm goes: yes, digital resolution is on top of film; high Grade 35mm film resolution is surpassed at about 12mp--inexpensive film can be bested with as few as 6mp.

However pro film photographers typically shoot in medium format which would take 30mp to surpass with digital. Large format film would take 100's of mp. There are some ultra-highend digitals that are entering those markets, but they cost more then a car.

 

[WDodd]

Us engineering types are a stubborn sort and I would find it very hard to believe that they will ever be a ceiling as to the number of pixels in a camera.

The same holds true for image processors and the camera's ability to process images to correct the lens issues that were mentioned.

Camera technology is following much the same trend as computers, iPods, flash memory, or any other technological device today.

P.S. There's a pre-school section to this forum?

 

[asfixiate]

I believe I read somewhere that you need at least a 14mp non cropped to match results of Film.

I personally made a poor comparison over the weekend. There were 6 highschool/college portraits on my fiance's mother's entertainment center.

it was like film(nice),film(nice),film(nice),film(nice),digital(nice)wait let me look closer...you can tell that's digital. Now keep in mind it obviously could have been the camera but when I was about 6 feet away I couldn't tell and up close could.

I don't know what type of camera or any of that but I could easily tell it was digital...There have been times with my 5mp easyshare that I couldn't tell the difference between it and film as well as a friend of mine's 4mp.

 

[passerby]

I just bought a mag today and inside there is an article about the soon coming Sony DSLR - which will have 20mp or 24mp. I think the MP bussiness is still going for sometime to come by the look of it.

 

[Mav]

As far as 35mm goes: yes, digital resolution is on top of film; high Grade 35mm film resolution is surpassed at about 12mp--inexpensive film can be bested with as few as 6mp.

However pro film photographers typically shoot in medium format which would take 30mp to surpass with digital. Large format film would take 100's of mp. There are some ultra-highend digitals that are entering those markets, but they cost more then a car.

What's your source for this because the Pop Photo I think it was from April '08 that I referenced above compared ISO 100 print film to a Canon 1Ds MkIII and the print film out resolved it.

 

[Hawaii Five-O]

I don't know though are mega pixels similar to what the GHZ rat race was for the computer? Like now GHZ isn't as important as the efficiency of multiple cores. I think instead of more MP, manufacturers should just keep improving what we already have. Like an HDR function in the CCD or something. or dual core CCDS haha.Instead 50 MP we could have a 12.5 MP quad core.

 

[Iron Flatline]

I just saw 20 prints that were 8 feet by 10 feet off an 8 x 10 inch negative.

The contact prints from the negative had more detail than most digital prints, and the actual large prints were so detailed that I could see individual curtains and people in the apartment buildings half a mile in the distance of this wide angle shot.

I want a back for a camera that can do that! And I want to pay less than $15,000 for it.

 

[TamiyaGuy]

I want a back for a camera that can do that! And I want to pay less than $15,000 for it.

What You Need:

Four Nikon D40x CCD sensors;
One Nikon D40x body;
Superglue.

 

[Mav]

I just saw 20 prints that were 8 feet by 10 feet off an 8 x 10 inch negative.

The contact prints from the negative had more detail than most digital prints, and the actual large prints were so detailed that I could see individual curtains and people in the apartment buildings half a mile in the distance of this wide angle shot.

I want a back for a camera that can do that! And I want to pay less than $15,000 for it.

Large format film rules!

 

[Antithesis]

11x14 prints look fine off my 13MP sensor, and that's the biggest I usually go. There are 36x48 (I think, they are big) prints in the studio I work at made off of a d2h, and they look very good. It depends where you print it.

 

[King Mango]

I'm stuck on this Bayer Interpolation thing. I just looked it up on wikipedia and I see a sensor with an 8x8 grid of GRGB fliters over it. You can't possibly tell me my camera's sensor only uses 64 blocks to create an image? srsly? 2816/8=352... :scratch:
By that example my camera is only getting information for one color channel for each 352x264 block of pixels and some algorithm is doing the figuring on all that?

 

[WTF?]

we dont really NEED more, but it cant hurt to have more.

 

[djacobox372]

What's your source for this because the Pop Photo I think it was from April '08 that I referenced above compared ISO 100 print film to a Canon 1Ds MkIII and the print film out resolved it.

This comes from my own observations. I've seen a number of articles on this subject and they all seem to reach different conclusions.

It should be pointed out that megapixels isn't always 1:1 with observable resolution. The mkIII may claim 21mp, but from what I can see it doesn't resolve much, if any, more detail then a Nikon D3 which is 12mp.

Film being analog is a bit tricky to compare directly to digital, the finest areas of detail in film are inconsistent; you may have one spot on the negative that is slightly better then a 12mp digital, others may be worse.

There's also the question of scanning method, since almost everybody prints digitally these days. Without drum scanning, 35mm film will struggle to keep up with 6 or 8mp digital photos. With high end scanning, and PERFECTLY developed film you may surpass a 12mp digital shot... but that's a lot of stars that have to come into allignment.

What can't be denied is films superiority in latitude, color and grain quality.... digital has a ways to go to catch up in those categories.

 

[prodigy2k7]

The image quality doesnt only depend on the MP but the print size itself.
a 13MP camera will produce a better 8x10 than a 100MP camera at 300dpi.

Of course everyone knows that as you enlarge a image, it starts to get pixelated. Well not many people think about or realize is the same happens when you shrink an image.

You dont want to take pictures with 100MP and print 4x6